Hearts Hammers hits 30 years of neighbors helping neighbors

Three hundred and eight Hearts & Hammers volunteers united at South Whidbey Middle School Saturday morning for breakfast before venturing to 25 job sites, where they helped their neighbors replace drywall, fix leaks, haul debris and address any other possible problem that needed it.

On a Hearts & Hammers workday, volunteering runs much deeper than home repairs. The meals alone are a 45-person, three-shift operation. Breakfast means introductions, project assignments and safety tips. Dinner means celebration, reflection and getting to know each other better.

Red Cross volunteers gave smoke alarm testing instructions and replacement batteries. Island County offered free dumping. There was even a masseuse for those who worked the hardest.

Saturday marked Hearts & Hammers’ 30th year, and House Captain Marcia Wiley, a job site lead, has volunteered for each one.

The first year was much smaller than this one, she said, about seven homes and 100 volunteers. She became a house captain in 1994 and never stopped.

“I can’t say enough good about it,” she said. “It’s just the most incredibly wonderful experience to be involved in this, and I’m in my 70s now. Someday I may need help, and I won’t be afraid to call.”

That’s how Hearts & Hammers works, she said. It’s neighbors helping neighbors, so the line between those helping and those in need is often blurred. The nonprofit organization was founded by the late Lynn Willeford, a South Whidbey resident.

At the job site, volunteers set up a garage door, loaded a dump truck full of debris and repaired a decrepit building.

The home belongs to the sister-in-law of volunteer Rocky Hawkins. Hawkins’s brother passed away of cancer, so he wanted to make sure his sister-in-law is taken care of.

“It’s my brother,” he said. “I guess you’d call it volunteering. I’ve been volunteering forever.”

The two brothers married the two sisters, he said, so the whole family is close.

“Our kids are kind of tied,” he said. “We’re never sure whose kids are whose.”

Since inception, not only has Hearts & Hammers on South Whidbey grown yearly, but it has multiplied — now, Central and North Whidbey have their own factions.

“It’s phenomenal,” Wiley said. “Look at what we’re doing here today, cleaning up this yard. That’s something we’ve done since day one. We clean up the island.”

At another job site, volunteers repaired an upstairs deck with a “phantom” leak that damaged the living space downstairs. Below it, they replaced the drywall.

The owner, former South Whidbey Record writer Joan Soltys, can no longer walk upstairs to fix it.

“I can’t do my deck myself,” she said. “I can’t repair this, and it costs a lot of money, and for some of us, I’m a senior, fixed income.”

House Captain Kent McCord is a private contractor. Most of the time, he builds nice homes for wealthy people. Hearts & Hammers gives him an opportunity to give back to those who need it but can’t afford it.

“It’s a neat thing to see just how many elderly people slip through the cracks, and then this organization comes out to provide support in a way that I don’t think would be done,” he said.

While the annual workday is a major affair, it’s just one part of Hearts & Hammers, he said. Finishing touches of what they didn’t complete on Saturday will be taken care of by the Home Emergency Action Repair Team, or HEART, a year-long effort.

Most of the homes aren’t requested by the owners themselves, McCord said, but nominated by neighbors.

Hearts & Hammers has been going on for so long, almost everyone has asked for help at some point, Soltys said. It’s a rare thing in a community, and it’s run by rare people.

They always come with big smiles and do more than they are asked, she said.

“All I was expecting was they would be on the roof putting pond liner, apparently, but they started cleaning up the brush that had been piled up,” she said. “They said, ‘oh, we can do that,’ so I was surprised. They always do something (more).”

At Laura Fitzgerald’s home, volunteers replaced rotten deck boards to make the deck safe, installed metal flashing to repair wood rot and pruned trees and bushes around the property.

“I think it’s a wonderful organization, people coming out, getting together and helping the community, getting to know other people,” she said. “I’ve met so many different people through this. One of these days I’m going to volunteer.”

The people make the work worthwhile, said her house captain, Isaac Lights.

“The people in our community are worth investing in. I think we live in a special place, and part of that is because people are involved so, if we contribute and get involved, it makes it a special place to live,” he said.

Learn about volunteering or applying for help at heartsandhammers.com.